


Ropes

by SeeEmRunning



Category: Leverage
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12883449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeEmRunning/pseuds/SeeEmRunning
Summary: Parker remembers too much and nowhere near enough.





	Ropes

She doesn’t remember her parents. That’s okay - there is no God. They don’t remember her either.

She remembers some of the foster homes. She remembers burning one down. She remembers the month-long stay in a facility, surrounded by children and staff that were good at pretending to care but then whispered poison into each other’s ears. The facility lasted two weeks before she escaped.

She remembers the streets, and prowling, looking for food or water or shelter. She started stealing, and her success made her bolder, until one day she stole the wallet of the world’s greatest thief, and he tracked her to the condemned warehouse she was squatting in and took her under his wing.

She remembers Archie saying she could never meet his real family. She remembers the sharp pain that bled inside her for months before it scarred over. It never really healed.

She remembers her first heist, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She remembers the feeling, the exhilaration, so different from the bland numbness that had been seeping from her bones for years.

She remembers learning to rappel and base jump, remembers the thrill in her stomach, the sick pleasure in thinking maybe the ropes would break and she’d plummet to her death. She remembers the disappointment when the ropes held. The disappointment’s still there every time she survives.

She remembers her first diamond haul, and she remembers fencing them. She remembers the exhilaration wearing off, piece by piece, until she didn’t feel anything anymore.

And then she was on a crew, and she was starting to feel things again, and it was equal parts wonderful and terrifying, and every time she jumped off a ledge she hoped the rope would catch her and prayed that it wouldn’t.

And now she's running her own crew, taking them to even greater heights, and one day the ropes will break, and she'll be okay with it when they do.


End file.
